When Emmalynn Remembers Page 17

  The diary jumped and rambled. Henrietta wrote about her youth, about days long since gone, and she related insignificant bits of gossip concerning the people she saw day by day: the butcher, the mailman, the woman who came to collect alms for the needy. There was a humorous passage about her encounter with Betty, when she chased the child away from the window, and a full and rather salty account of her feud with Burt Reed. There were other entries, too, passages that caused me to feel first surprise and then a steadily mounting horror. I read without stopping.

  I closed the book. I held it in my lap I sat very still. My eyes were dry, but they felt hot and seemed to sting. Billie watched me from across the room. She understood. She didn’t say anything. After a while I opened the book again to reread certain entries that seemed to leap out from the pages of trivia and gossip. The first came near the front of the book, after a description of our arrival and a series of complaints about the condition of the house:

  He came today. Damn! Why must I be haunted? He won’t leave. He wants money. They all want money. I told him it was all gone. He laughed at me. I’ve done my part. I don’t want anything else to do with him. I don’t care what he does as long as he leaves me alone. People say blood is thicker than water. I say hogwash. I might be unnatural, but I wouldn’t care if he were dead. He’s not well. There is something about him that frightens me. He’s smooth on the surface, but underneath that I sense something dark and evil, evil.…

  I flipped over pages that detailed her dislike of medicines and my own persistence in bringing her pills and tonics. This was followed by another brief entry:

  I had a bad spat with Emmalynn this morning. I treated her abominably. I really am an old terror! I wanted to apologize to her, but my pride prevented me. I ordered those new novels she wanted, though, and had the man at the swank shop send out two cashmere sweaters. She’s my only comfort, my only luxury. I intend to make it up to her, though she doesn’t know it. He thinks he will get what’s left. He’s going to be surprised! I intend to keep an eagle eye on Emmalynn’s inheritance. I’m going to fix it so he won’t be able to touch it, no matter what he thinks he can prove in court.…

  There was a long swirling line and a blot of ink at the bottom of the page, as though she’d had to put the book away hastily. Someone must have walked in. I read the next entry:

  He threatened me today. He says he needs money desperately. He wants to get out of the country. He wants to make a new start. I told him everything was gone. He knows about my reserve. Somehow he found out about it. I didn’t think anyone knew, but he does, I’m sure. He must have seen them when I took them out of the drawer, that day I decided I needed a better hiding place. They were in my purse all day. He must have seen them.…

  I reread the entry. So Doctor Clarkson had been wrong. The highly improbable was true after all. I was not really surprised. I had lived with Henrietta long enough to know that the improbable was precisely what to expect from her. I continued to read:

  This morning Emmalynn went for a long walk. She thinks I don’t know why she’s so fond of fresh air. I have a pair of binoculars, and I’ve watched her talking to that man. He’s no good for her. I’d like to tell her so. Maybe I will. While she was gone he came up to my room. Scared the life out of me. I turned around and there he was, standing in the doorway, smiling with his eyes flat and hard and hating. We had quite a quarrel. He said he’d kill me. I said I’m just an old woman who can’t live very much longer anyway so go ahead, do it. He didn’t say anything for a long time. His face was like a mask, all flat, no expression, and then suddenly he laughed with his eyes still hating and said he knew how he’d make me do what he wanted. He’d kill Emmalynn. He meant it. He couldn’t kill me. It would be unnatural, and he’d never find what he’s after, but he would kill her. He’d do it to hurt me. I’ve got to get her away from here. I can’t tell her why. I can’t tell anyone. I must make her leave, before he can carry out his threat.…

  I stared at the words, dancing blue swirls and loops that moved across the paper gaily. My eyes seemed to lose the ability to focus, and the words writhed and curled on the paper, ugly things, alive and evil. I waited for the sensation to pass and then turned to the last two entries:

  She’s gone at last. I’ve finally gotten rid of her. The girl has the patience of Job. I’ve been impossible for the past week, pushing her further and further. I would rant and rave and she’d stay calm and give me a pill or simply walk out of the room. I finally succeeded this morning. We had a violent argument over her secret romance, which never was a secret to me. I told her she wasn’t to see him anymore. She went red in the face and said it was her life and she’d do what she wanted with it and I said oh no, not as long as she stayed in this house. She said she’d leave. I laughed and said she didn’t have the guts. She packed her bags and left. Oh God, it hurt. I don’t want her to hate me. I’m an old sinner, but I love that girl like she was my own.…

  I know what he would like to do, but he hasn’t got the courage to do it. He’s weak, not at all like me. Last night I heard him prowling around the house, searching. He crept down the hall and opened the door to my room and I was awake but didn’t let on. He just stood there in the doorway, looking at me, and finally he went away and I heard him mumbling as he left. I’m not afraid of him. Now that Emmalynn’s gone and I know he can’t hurt her I have nothing to fear. He can lurk around, and he can threaten me all he likes, but I know he won’t touch me. He couldn’t. There are certain crimes that would be crimes against nature. So I’ll wait, and he’ll grow tired of his little game and go away. He must.…

  I understood so much now, and my grief was greater. It would be a part of me for a long time to come, but I had no time to examine it now. Now, I had to put it aside and summon forth a steel-like calm to carry me through. I closed the book and put it on a table and stood up. The room was cold. I folded my arms across my breast and looked at Billie. She was standing by the black marble hearth, her face pale in the shadows.

  “It hurt?” she said quietly.

  “A lot,” I replied.

  “The diary explains everything.”

  I nodded.

  “It was Gordon Stuart,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “You’ve forgotten the letter.”

  “But she said he—”

  “Exactly. She said he. She never called him by name. She used a pronoun throughout the diary, although she readily identified everyone else. Don’t you think that’s curious?”

  “I wondered.”

  “It’s basic psychology,” I said. “She’d denied his existence for all these years, refused to give him a name. By using a pronoun instead of his name she was merely following a pattern she’d followed for years, refusing to recognize him.”

  Billie frowned. She still didn’t understand.

  “The letter,” I said. “There was a connection. A major one.”

  I watched her face. It showed deep puzzlement, then surprise, then enlightenment. She looked at me with wide eyes, her lips parted, and then the eyes grew dark with fear.

  “My God,” she whispered. “All this time—”

  “I know. It chills the blood.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here, Em.”

  “We’re going to, just as soon as we get the jewels.”

  “You know where they are?”

  “Henrietta was quite clear about it.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Think.”

  “She said—yes, of course: ‘I intend to keep an eagle eye on Emmalynn’s inheritance—’”

  “They’re bound to be there,” I said.

  I took the gun out of my purse. The metal was icy cold to the touch. I wrapped my fingers around it tightly and held it at my side. Billie took up one of the lamps and we left the room, Billie close behind me, the lamp casting red-gold shadows on the walls. We stood at the bottom of the staircase for a moment, both hesitant, both afraid. Cold air drifted down in chilly currents that f
elt clammy on our cheeks and arms. I gripped the gun even tighter. Billie took a deep breath. We started up into the shifting, stirring shadows of the stairwell.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I HAD LEFT a light burning in my room. It was not burning now. Perhaps the cold breeze billowing through the opened windows had blown it out. The hall was washed with darkness, the walls coated black, and the lamp Billie held only underlined and emphasized this darkness. We paused at the top of the stairs. The breeze stopped blowing. The curtains fell limp. Everything grew still, quiet, but there was a sense of motion all around us, subtle and shifting. I had the curious sensation that the house was my enemy, that it had been holding back, gathering force, and now this stillness was the stillness before attack. Billie must have felt it too. She was breathing heavily, as though with difficulty, and the hand holding the lamp trembled visibly.

  I led the way down the hall to Henrietta’s old room. We went inside. I closed the door. Billie set the lamp down on a marble topped table, and we stared at each other in the flickering yellow glow. Billie tried a flippant smile to show me she wasn’t really afraid, but the smile failed. Her eyes were dark, and her cheekbones looked chalky. I sighed and put the gun down beside the lamp. It was a moment before I could speak.

  “It’ll just take a moment,” I said.

  “Hurry, Em.”

  “I’ll get something to stand on.”

  The eagle perched on top of the tall, heavy wardrobe, out of reach. The yellow-green glass eyes seemed to be watching us in the wavering light. I moved a small velvet footstool to the edge of the wardrobe and climbed up on it, reaching for the eagle. I shivered as my fingers touched the dead, moldy feathers. The eagle was heavy, far too heavy, and I lifted it down and set it on the table. It stared at us accusingly as it perched there on its black wooden pedestal. Billie backed away from it a little, as though she feared it would fly in her face.

  “I’ve never seen anything so hideous,” she whispered.

  “We’ll have to find something to cut it open,” I replied.

  “I don’t think I could touch it.”

  I stepped over to the old roll-topped desk and there, among the dusty colored glass paperweights, I found a brass letter opener. The blade was dull, but it would do. I moved back to the table and stood over the eagle, wondering where I should make the first incision. The yellow-green eyes glared at me as though alive and aware of my intentions. I closed my eyes and plunged the knife into its chest. The eagle seemed to wince with pain. A cloud of dust exploded and feathers littered the table. I split the body open and reached inside, shuddering. I pulled out the worn chamois pouch. It was heavy and lumpy, tied with a piece of cord at the top. The eagle toppled over on the table, a limp pile of dust and feathers, destroyed.

  We did not say anything. We stared at the bag. The excitement and elation we might have felt was overshadowed by the fear that hung like a tangible thing in the small, cluttered room with its sour smell and dust. We had no desire to examine the contents of the pouch. We wanted only to get away from this room, this house. I picked up the gun. Billie took the lamp and the lumpy chamois pouch. I touched the doorknob with trembling fingers. We heard the floor outside groan under the weight of something heavy moving across it.

  I froze. Billie drew in her breath sharply.

  The noise was repeated, a stealthy sound.

  Strangely enough, the sound had a calming effect on both of us, like a bucket of cold water in the face of hysteria. The sound was real, something that we could hear and realize and therefore fight, whereas a moment before we had been in the grip of an unknown terror, a sinister pall that hung over us like a dark cloud. The knowledge of real danger is much less frightening than the silent threat of evil. My hand tightened on the doorknob. Billie held the lamp up. Her hand was steady.

  “He’s out there,” she whispered.

  “I think he is.”

  “Waiting,” she said. “What are we going to do?”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  For some reason the room with the destroyed eagle and the sour smell and dust seemed to hold a far greater terror than the hall outside with the stealthy creak of floorboards.

  “I have the gun,” I said.

  “Do you think you can use it?”

  “I—I think so. Put out the light, Billie.”

  “But, Em—”

  “We’ll be safer if he can’t see us.”

  She blew out the lamp, set it down in darkness. I opened the door. The hinges creaked loudly, a grating noise that split the silence. The sound echoed in the hall, died down, vanished, and there was nothing but the soft sound of breathing and the gentle rustle of the curtains billowing in the now light breeze. I reached for Billie’s hand and squeezed it. We were both acutely aware of the danger and acutely aware of the necessity of remaining calm. We crept out into the hall and were soon swallowed up by the shadowy darkness.

  We moved towards the staircase, slowly, silently. At each end of the long hall there were pools of light where silver moonbeams drifted through the opened windows, and in between there was darkness, gray at the edges, growing denser, impenetrable in the middle where we moved. It would be impossible to see anyone leaning against the wall, but I could feel someone, a presence, a curious current in the atmosphere. I listened for the sound of labored breathing, the sound of footsteps, but there were no noises. I could not be sure that someone was actually watching us, but I seemed to feel eyes on us as we moved down the hall.

  I stumbled against the bannister of the staircase. Billie jerked my hand. I reached out in space and found the railing, ran my palm over the smooth mahogany and began to go down the stairs, Billie following me. I moved down, down, hesitating before each step, and each step screamed in protest, though the noises were actually small squeaks. I knew the noise would bring him screaming out of the shadows and hurtling down the stairs with the axe waving and lusty for blood, but we were halfway down now, and I could see the hazy gray-black of the lower hall. The stairs curled around and there were just a few more to go. I felt the evil behind me, up there, and I tilted my head back and peered. Two hands were gripping the bannister, a torso was leaning over, a face looking down. I could hear breathing, heavy, carefully controlled, spilling down into the stairwell.

  Billie heard it, too. She looked up.

  We stumbled down the last steps and into the lower hall. We hurried towards the front door, heedless of noise now. It was locked. I fumbled with the bolts, rattled the latch, jerked the heavy brass knob. The door swung open. A flood of silver moonlight swept over the porch and illuminated the hall. We stepped over the dark boards and started to run down the steps. We stopped. We stared at the scene before us. We both forgot the man leaning over the stairwell inside.

  Doctor Clarkson’s battered blue car was parked crazily in front of the house, both front doors wide open, the headlights mote-filled yellow wands pointing towards the graveled drive. Doctor Clarkson was sprawled out on the ground mid-way between the car and the porch, his arms flung out wildly, his head turned to one side. He was still, very still, and something dark and wet covered his forehead and temple. The breeze that drifted from over the water was icy cold, and there was a total silence unbroken by even the hum of insects. I had the feeling that time had stopped dead still.

  We must have paused for only an instant, but it seemed like we stood there for an eternity, watching the motes of dust swirling in the wavering headlights, watching the dark wetness spread and slowly drip from his head. I thought, they’ve failed me. They promised someone would be watching the house at all times, day and night, and they’ve failed me. They promised nothing would happen, yet this has happened. Where are they? Why did they let this happen? Billie moved before I did. She stepped quickly down the steps and kneeled at his side. She touched his head. She lifted his wrist and felt his pulse. I followed her, numb, shocked. I could see his chest rising and falling, and I could hear his breathing.

  Thank God for that,
I said silently.

  “He’s alive,” Billie said in a flat voice. “He’s been hit over the head. There’s a lot of blood, but the gash isn’t deep. The blood is still warm. He hasn’t been here long. What shall we do, Em?”

  I was lost, trapped in a nightmare world, too numb to feel, too numb to answer her question. Billie looked up at me and then, after a moment, asked the question again. A tremor went through my body. I came alive and with the feeling of life came decision.

  “We can’t leave him here,” I said. “We have to get him to a hospital right away. See if the keys are still in his car.”

  Billie looked in the car.

  “They’re gone,” she said.

  “Perhaps they’re in his pocket.”

  I knelt down and slipped my hand into the doctor’s pockets. The keys were not there. They were not in the ignition. They were not in his pockets. Someone had taken them, deliberately. Coldly, methodically, someone had thought this out. Doctor Clarkson would not likely be needing the keys for a long time, but his assailant knew that we might try to use the doctor’s car for escape. I felt an icy chill as I realized this. He knew we would try to get the doctor in the car and get away, and he had made it impossible, and he knew we would not, could not run away and leave the doctor in a critical condition. We were stranded. He had planned it, down to the last detail.

  “Em, we can’t leave him here alone,” Billie said, her voice firm.

  “I know. He knows it, too. That’s why he didn’t kill the doctor. He could have, but he didn’t—because he wanted to keep us here. We could leave a—a corpse, but we couldn’t leave an unconscious man.”

  “Em—”

  “George,” I said. “George Reed. Go to his cottage. Take the jewels. If he’s there, tell him what’s happened. If not, he has a telephone, phone the police, tell them.”